A Grieving Sister Learns Her Brother May Yet Live In This Excerpt From The Warm Hands of Ghosts

Katherine Arden is best known for her Winternight trilogy, a lush and gleaming historical fantasy series based on the myths of medieval Russia. (If you haven’t read The Bear and the Nightingale yet, please fix your life immediately.) And though her latest novel, The Warm Hands of Ghosts, is very different in terms of subject matter, the emotional longing, lyrical prose, and fully realized worldbuilding that feels like the best sort of fairytale will be very familiar to fans of Arden’s previous works.

Set in early twentieth-century Halifax and on the battlefields of Belgium in the final year of World War I, The Warm Hands of Ghosts is one part historical novel, one part supernatural fantasy, and one part meditation on grief. A story of war and loss that delicately explores the long-tail effects of trauma, it follows Laura Ivan, a 24-year-old combat nurse who is sent home to Nova Scotia after being seriously wounded. But when she’s told that her younger brother Freddie, serving at the front in Belgium, is missing and presumed dead, she volunteers to return to Europe, aiming to work at a private hospital while she tries to find answers about what happened to him—and whether he might still be alive.

An alternating timeline follows Freddie’s story, as awakens underground, trapped in an overturned German pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier. As he and the German Hans Winter bond while facing down what is their presumed death, a connection that lingers after they escape. But distraught at the thought of returning to the fighting, they both take refuge at a mysterious hotel, where they meet a fiddler with seemingly supernatural abilities. As Laura inches closer to the truth about her brother’s disappearance, both she and Freddie will have to confront the wounds the war has left on their family—and decide what their future will look like. 

Here’s how the publisher describes the story. 

January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier, a German by the name of Hans Winter. Against all odds, the two men form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. Unable to bear the thought of returning to the killing fields, especially on opposite sides, they take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.

As shells rain down on Flanders, and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging—or better left behind entirely.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts won’t hit shelves on Tuesday, February 13, but we’ve got an exclusive look at the story to help tide you over till then, in which a seance reveals 

Laura was hauled to her feet. She found herself standing before a finely dressed, old-fashioned person, half a head shorter than her, perhaps ten years older, and enchantingly beautiful. Outlandish hair, the color of fool’s gold, framed neat cheekbones, and a mouth like a rosebud. She was wearing black.

Laura got her balance and collected her wits. “Thank you, ma’am. Such a soft carpet. I’m glad I had the occasion to learn it firsthand.”

“Oh, don’t thank me,” said the woman. “Are you sure you’re all right? I mean, when I heard footsteps, I just— I was in there, and Miss Parkey was— Oh, I felt such a thrill, as though she was really speaking to the beyond, and then you were walking, so I had to run out and see. I am clumsy. I’m so sorry. I just— I thought it might be Jimmy.”

“Jimmy?”

“My son. James. He’s missing— I mean I haven’t had news of him. Or— Well, he was in a battle. Near a place called— Oh, I can’t pronounce it. Something with a P. Pass— ”

“Passchendaele,” supplied Laura, voice going a little flat. She’d gone home wounded in the midst of that ill-starred push. She refused to think of Freddie.

The stranger was still talking. “Oh, yes, of course— I never— Oh, those foreign words, you know— I hoped— that is— that the Parkeys could tell me where he is now. Because he’s missing. I’m Penelope Shaw.”

“Laura Iven,” said Laura.

Mrs. Shaw smiled: an impish expression that crinkled her but didn’t reach her worried eyes. “My aunt did always call me a heedless elephant of a girl. I’m really—  Well, I usually do look where I’m going, but I— Oh, am I talking too much? I do that when I’m nervous, and— ”

Three heads had popped out of the parlor: the Parkeys, neat as birds. Stout Lucretia, motherly Clotilde, vengeful Agatha. Agatha was blind. Her eyes, milky with cataracts, swiveled round the hallway in a parody of seeing.

“Not a ghost, Miss Parkey,” Laura said to Agatha. “Only your elusive lodger. Good evening to you all.”

“That’s Laura,” announced Agatha. “Could never mistake Laura.”

Clotilde looked solemn. “The spirits have sent you, dear.”

“Have they, Miss Parkey?”

“You are the link,” intoned Lucretia. “Come in, dear, come in, we will hold hands and commune with the spirits once more.”

 That was what she got for escaping the kitchen. Tackled flat, then hauled into a séance. And yet . . . Mrs. Shaw had brightened with renewed hope, and the only thing waiting for Laura was that box, brooding below.

She followed Mrs. Shaw and the Parkeys into the parlor. They had turned down the oil lamps— the Parkeys abhorred electric light— but the last of the daylight filtered in. A meager coal fire shone red in the grate. The Parkeys’ wooden Ouija board was laid out on the green tablecloth. Mrs. Shaw’s golden hair caught the lamplight.

“Come,” said Agatha. “Quickly, quickly, while the spirits are with us. The hour is fortuitous, the hour is propitious.”

She hissed her sibilants. Mrs. Shaw shuddered. Laura, used to comforting people, gave her a reassuring look. Agatha put the planchette on H. Laura put her fingers on the planchette. She wished she were sitting down to supper.

“Come, dear,” said Agatha Parkey. “Let us begin.”

Mrs. Shaw gasped when she saw Laura’s hands. Her fingerjoints were knotted, stiff with scar tissue, palms latticed red and white.

“Oh, dear. What happened?”

Flanders happened. “I shook hands with a fine gentleman in a top hat,” Laura said. “A mistake; they told me later he was Lord Beelzebub. You really meet all kinds of people at parties abroad.”

But Mrs. Shaw didn’t seem to register Laura’s reply; she was obviously putting together Laura’s limp and her hands, her uniform and the lines that stress had carved round her mouth. In a moment she was going to start asking questions. As though Laura, who had nursed in a war zone, was the closest thing in the room to Jimmy Shaw’s ghost.

The last of the day was gone and the shadows lay thick in that room.

Laura, exasperated, shook her head across the table. Blessedly, Mrs. Shaw bit her pink lip and was silent.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Agatha, to the room at large. “The Departed love us. They want to be near us.”

Mrs. Shaw looked down at the planchette.

“Now,” said Agatha. “We fix our minds on the spirit we wish to summon, and we close our eyes.” The little wavering gas flame gilded their hands. Agatha’s blind eyes were fixed on the board. “We are in search of one who was in life called James Shaw, son of Penelope Shaw.”

Silence in answer, and stillness.

Agatha lifted her head, eyes closed now, and addressed the darkness. “James?” she said. “James Shaw? Will you speak to us?”

The floor creaked. A hush lay like a hand over Blackthorn House, and in the silence, almost imperceptibly the planchette crept toward yes. Laura hadn’t felt them manipulate it, but that was unsurprising. The Parkeys were professionals. Mrs. Shaw had gone white.

“Who is here?” Agatha’s cloudy, blind eyes stared at nothing.

J I M

“Jimmy!” cried Mrs. Shaw. “Jimmy! Where are you? Are you— Have you passed on, dear?” She had begun to shake. Laura felt it through the table.

The planchette drifted to yes. Then it kept going. L I S T, said the planchette. Mrs. Shaw’s gaze was locked on the moving arrow.

“Listen,” gasped Lucretia. “But listen to what?” The world outside was utterly still.

B E W R, said the planchette.

“Beware?” echoed Agatha, sharp.

Mrs. Shaw said, “No, but— Jimmy? Darling? Are you all right?”

BWR MSIC MROR, said the planchette. HIM.

This was strange even for the Parkeys. MROR? Mirror? The detritus of Laura’s brain offered her a vague association with the Lady of Shalott, Freddie declaiming the verses from Tennyson while she pored over an anatomy textbook: The mirror crack’d from side to side, “The curse is come upon me,” cried . . .

“No, but— ” Now Mrs. Shaw was searching the empty air with frantic eyes. “Jimmy? Is it  really you?”

D E D, said the Ouija board. BUT HES ALIV

Mrs. Shaw didn’t speak.

“Who’s alive?” demanded Clotilde Parkey.

FRED, said the planchette. FREDI FRED FR FIN FIND FIND. And if there was any more, Laura didn’t see it because she’d wrenched back her chair, awkward on the carpet, turned away, and left the room.

Excerpted from THE WARM HANDS OF GHOSTS by Katherine Arden. Copyright © 2024 by Katherine Arden. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts will be released on February 13, but you can pre-order it right now. 

---

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB